If you want to make large groups of high school or college students look sheepishly at the floor you should bring up the topic of cheating. Cheating is “to deceive or mislead somebody, especially for personal advantage, break rules in the a game, exam, or contest in an attempt to gain and unfair advantage” and apparently it has reached epidemic levels (see here). The question that interests me is how cheating is justified by students – why they might think it is okay to cheat. I recently observed a group of high schoolers discussing three scenarios to bring out various lines of reasoning. They gave some insight into the minds…